Photography
Corporate Event Photography
One of the aspects of my job is to shoot events. It’s one of the things that I am least good at, and although when I look at my work over the years it’s clear that I’m improving, at the end I feel unsatisfied. I am never 100% happy with the work I produce at [...]
Mobile Fotos App for the iPhone
As I mentioned last week, I’ve been utilizing my iPhone a bit more lately for scouting, idea capture and in general, just another way to boost my creativity a bit. One of the challenges that I’ve faced with the iPhone, however, is how to get my photos off the phone and onto my computer in [...]
Megan at the Races
Here’s a quick shot from October that I finally have gotten around to doing the post-production on. This was taken at a steeplechase race in Virginia. Incidentally I picked the overall winner for the cup race that day – a horse called Bubble Economy. Unfortunately lots of other people bet on that horse as well [...]
Portfolio Review
I’m stuck at work this week without any actual work to be done. When I look at my office IM system, the only people on the job are the ones in my department, waiting for the ones who aren’t in our department to bring us some work. Which ain’t going to happen. But I’m not [...]
Victoria
Sometimes I fall in love with a photo I’ve taken and can’t stop looking at it. This was an outtake from a shoot yesterday and I keep coming back to it. It’s fantastic when a standard sit n’ pose corporate portrait yields something like this:
The View
Last week, I mentioned a shoot on the streets of New York commissioned by our London office. Apparently they were pleased with the shots that I delivered and asked me for another shoot. This one, however, was to be a landscape of a city. Because it’s being used for the cover of a global publication, [...]
Apple Picking
Dr. Girlfriend as Eve… Over the weekend we went upstate a ways to go apple picking, something that Dr. Girlfriend has been begging to do for a long time. Having grown up with apple trees in my yard, it’s hard for me to understand her obsession with manual labor of this sort, but I likes [...]
Some Street Shots
On Monday I am going to be shooting a portrait of a partner in my firm for an upcoming publication. I have been given a photo brief from a designer in London which asks for black and white imagery, shot wide with dynamic backgrounds. The problem is that our office is exceedingly dull, and generally [...]
A good week
I don’t have a ton of time to do a full post, so I wanted to share a preview of a project I shot this week. I’m really excited with the results, and I’ll share the full story as soon as I have time write it up. In the meantime, here is a small sample [...]
David Alan Harvey Workshop Party
On Friday night, Dr. Girlfriend, my friend Tim and I trekked out to Brooklyn to the loft/studio of photographer David Alan Harvey. David has a workshop called At Home with David Alan Harvey that he puts on twice a year. He describes the class like this: i will spend “one on one” time with each [...]
Photoshelter Collection Shuts Down
Well, my first foray into stock photography didn’t last long. Just a few weeks after I was accepted as a contributor to the Photoshelter Collection, the company has decided to close down it’s stock photography sales division to focus on it’s Personal Archive and storage options. As a contributor I received an email shortly before [...]
NYC Photography Now Means “Filming”
The new permit rules for NYC took effect in mid-August, and in some ways they are a bit more draconian than they were before. Pretty much anything that creates and image of any kind is classified under the blanket of “film” and therefore has the same requirements for permits and insurance as a film crew. [...]
Keywords and Metadata
Since I don’t have much in the way of interesting visuals to show off this week (damn, I need to get away from my cube so I can shoot more!) I’m going to do a few brief posts about my workflow for those of you who are curious. I tend to shoot a lot, probably [...]
Inexperienced Photog
Dad: Why don't you take some pictures of all the buildings? Little boy with camera: I already took pictures of those buildings. (aims camera towards New Jersey) I'll take pictures of this spot now! Mom (disgustedly): No honey, that's New Jersey. Nobody cares about New Jersey. –Staten Island Ferryvia Overheard in New York, Aug 10, [...]
Driving
I don’t own a car and therefore don’t get to drive often. But when I do I drive million miles an hour, like a spaceship. Kidding mom, just kidding. In reality the car* I was in doesn’t do much more than 55 so I wasn’t going that fast. Pretty happy with the results though. *The [...]
Me and My Lightmeter
To meter or not to meter. I’ve been reading photo blogs religously for the last couple of years, and the one over-arching theme amongst the digital professionals has been: when shooting digital, use the LCD as your meter rather than using an actual light meter. Nearly all of the pro-photo bloggers that I read don’t [...]
Model Mania
Boy, do I need to work on my posing skillz. I was tossed into a studio with three lovely models last Thursday without any thought or prep and kind of panicked. “Yeah, um, well, oh wait, don’t move that looks great….beautiful…” Sigh. After a while I got comfortable and was able to give some coherent [...]
Hard Light, Soft Fill
Last night in class we were experimenting with some hard light as our main light, and soft light as our fill. One thing that I took away was the idea of layering the light in a different way than seems intuitive. In general, as you’ll see in the samples posted below, I tend to put [...]
More Classwork
This week, edge lights and ring flash. Mostly stuff I already knew, but having someone explain the details and finer points, always helpful. Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, I love being around other photographers and talking about photography outside my bubble – almost as important to me as the classwork, although I’m learning a lot [...]